My Favourite Mascaras // Long, Beautiful Lashes

Beautiful, long pitch-black lashes are a dream of mine. I'm blessed with long lashes to begin with but they barely have any curl to them and are more of a brunette colour naturally. So obviously mascara is one of my favourite beauty products to try out but lately I have found a few ones that give me amazing lashes and I want to share them with the world.

1. Lancome Grandiose

This was the first Lancome mascara I have ever tried and the first mascara I fell head over heels in love with.

The wand is quite interesting, I believe there is nothing like this on the market and if so, Lancome was definitely the first one to do it. The wand isn't straight, it's curvy and twisted which makes it a little difficult to get in and out of the tube but I don't mind that. The applicator itself is a plastic wand with the bristles alternating between longer and shorter ones all around the wand. If you use it the first few times, it takes a while to get used to the twisted wand and it's easy to get mascara on your cheeks if you hold it the wrong way but if you let it dry on your skin for a bit, it comes off easily with a cotton bud.

It's probably one of the wettest formulas that I had tried in a long time, it took a few days to get used to that but I love it. I used to be obsessed with Benefit They're Real mascara and if you know that one, you know it's probably the driest mascara on the planet. That one probably lasted me a month until it was so dry, you couldn't use it anymore. Lancome's Grandiose is the complete opposite.

I find that it applies a good amount of product in one go and the wand really separates the lashes nicely. It's also extremely black which I love in a mascara. I don't find it to be very clumpy unless you apply way too much product but with this one, you definitely don't need to use a lot of product anyway.

It keeps my lashes up all day after curling them, which I also think is extremely important if you have saggy lashes that tend to fall down again during the day, just like mine. If you aren't careful, it can smudge under your eyes but I don't find it to be too extreme. It's easy to remove if you just wipe it a bit and you look as good as new.

I'd say it is more of a lengthening mascara than it is a volumizing one but I don't mind that too much. It does give a little bit of volume too but not too extreme.

Buy it on Douglas

2. Lancome Monsieur Big

Maybe you can see a little trend here with me and my Lancome mascaras. But in all honestly, I personally think that Lancome makes the best high end mascaras. Every single one that I have tried from them, I loved.

Monsieur Big is their newest mascara release and when it came out, of course I had to try it out. The wand on this is quite big and doesn't look very special when you first see it. It has natural bristles and pretty much reminds me of a standard mascara wand but it doesn't perform like one. It's pretty much the same length of bristles all around the wand, it's got the same thickness at the tip as it has on the other end, it's basically got nothing fancy going on.

When you apply this though, it gives you a false lash effect. You know those mascara commercials where they always wear false lashes but claim their mascara is so amazing it did that while in reality we all do know those are falsies and not their actual mascara? Yeah, Lancome could totally do a commercial without the models wearing false lashes.

Again, it's a very wet formula but unlike the Grandiose mascara, this one gives a lot of volume. I have to say though, it does get clumpy very easily if you aren't being careful with it. The first few times I used this mascara, I went a little overboard and basically had clumpy, stuck together lashes so I did go over with a clean disposable mascara wand to separate them again.

I find that super wet formulas are a little harder to work with because they stick your lashes together easily and if you're like me and you've used dry formulas for years and years, it takes a bit of time and practice to get used to the wet formula.

I definitely recommend giving a new mascara a few fair shots before you make up your mind because a new mascara I always find to be a big adjustment.

During the day it doesn't transfer or smudge but it can crumble off a bit if you applied it a little clumpy and weren't really careful. It does hold a curl great though.

Purchase it on Douglas

3. Benefit Bad Gal Bang

This is my newest obsession and also Benefits newest launch of mascara. They used to have their old Bad Gal mascara which I was never really interested in trying out but this new Bad Gal Bang had so much mixed reviews, I had to try it myself.

It's got a very long, thin wand that gets thinner at the tip and also has its bristles going from longer at the end to shorter ones at the tip of the applicator.

Again, a super wet formula but this time I have to be honest and tell you that the first few times I applied it, I absolutely did not like the mascara. It took me a few uses and I found out that using it like a regular mascara is not going to make it work. I read a comment on Youtube saying that Bad Gal Bang works best if you apply most of the products at the root of your lashes and wiggle it at the root a few times before you work your way up. So you wiggle the wand at the root of your eyelashes, then move upwards to the tip of your lashes, still wiggling the wand.

Also, you really don't need to dip your wand in another time. There is so much product on the wand that you can easily do both your eyes and also your bottom lashes in one go without having to get more product from the tube. If you follow these rules, it's going to make your eyelashes look amazing.

This mascara also gives more length than it does volume but I find that it makes such amazing long lashes, it's incredible. It lasts all day on me without crumbling or smudging, it keeps my eyelashes amazingly curled all day long and it's easy to remove in the evenings. Pretty much everything I look for in mascara.

You can buy it on Douglas

Really, these three are my top favourite mascaras and I always have them in my makeup drawer. Currently I have all three of them, as well as a backup of the Monsieur Big. I know mascara is a pretty personal thing and they all work so differently on different people but for me, I couldn't recommend them enough. They're absolute holy-grail status for me.